The present invention relates to vehicles, and more particularly to automated systems for identifying welds for a vehicle assemblies.
The process of designing a vehicle includes a prototyping stage during which prototype vehicles, vehicle subassemblies, and/or components are built and tested. The vehicle subassemblies may include two or more components that need to be welded together. For example, a vehicle body subassembly typically includes two or more structural components that are welded together. Typically welding methods include spotwelds, Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welds, and/or Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welds.
The location of the welds must be identified before the prototype vehicle subassembly can be built. Existing methods for locating the welds include a manual process for determining where the welds should be positioned. If changes are made after testing the prototype, the welds need to be manually relocated for the production assembly. The location of the welds for each subassembly of the vehicle can take from several man-days to several man-weeks to complete. Locating welds for the entire vehicle may take several months or longer. The time that is required to locate the welds has slowed the vehicle development process, which increases the development cost of vehicles.
A method and apparatus according to the present invention automatically locates welds on a subassembly including first and second components that are to be welded together. First and second finite element (FEA) analysis models of the first and second components of the subassembly are created and include elements. Edges of the first and second components are located. An outline of each component is translated a predetermined edge distance in a direction normal to its edge and in the plane of a corresponding element to define a weld line segment of the first component. Welds are located on the line segment with a predetermined maximum spacing and with a predetermined weld tolerance.
In other features, the identified line segment is compared to a predetermined minimum feature threshold after the identifying step and before the locating step. The identifying, comparing and locating steps are repeated for additional line segments of the first component. The identifying, comparing, locating and repeating steps are repeated for other line segments of the second component.
In still other features, welds that are within a predetermined minimum spacing are deleted on the line segments. Input specifications are retrieved from at least one of a user and memory. The input specifications include at least one of the predetermined edge distance, the weld maximum spacing, the weld minimum spacing, the weld tolerance and the predetermined minimum feature threshold. The welds include at least one of spotwelds, metal inert gas (MIG) welds and Tungsten inert gas (TIG) welds.
Further areas of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description provided hereinafter. It should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating the preferred embodiment of the invention, are intended for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention.